Detroit From left, Sarah Sokolovic, Darren Pettie, David Schwimmer and Amy Ryan at Playwrights Horizons in Lisa D’Amour’s dark comedy about the effects of economic uncertainty.Credit
Ruby Washington/The New York Times

A friendly suburban barbecue spirals into a delirious, dangerous bacchanal in the superb play “Detroit,” by Lisa D’Amour, which sizzled open at Playwrights Horizons on Tuesday night. A sharp X-ray of the embattled American psyche as well as a smart, tart critique of the country’s fraying social fabric, Ms. D’Amour’s dark comedy is as rich and addictively satisfying as a five-layer dip served up with a brimming bowl of tortilla chips.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize after its premiere two years ago at the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago — where I was first knocked out by it — Ms. D’Amour’s play has, happily and unhappily, lost none of its topical punch in its wayward journey to New York. (Scheduled for Broadway last season, the play made a pit stop at the National Theater in London before arriving here Off Broadway, in a new production directed with finesse by Anne Kauffman.)

As the country continues to grind through the worst downturn in generations, “Detroit” remains acute in its observation of the effects of economic uncertainty on a middle-class couple, played to perfection by Amy Ryan and David Schwimmer. The fall theater season is young as a newborn babe, but Ms. D’Amour’s play, both disturbing and bracingly funny, kicks things off with a promising burst of fireworks.

Ms. Ryan (an Oscar nominee for “Gone Baby Gone”) and Mr. Schwimmer (formerly known as Ross on “Friends”) play Mary and Ben, a couple living in a nameless suburb outside a midsize American city. (The play’s title is more metaphoric than literal.) Mary works as a paralegal, but Ben has recently been laid off from his job as a loan officer at a bank. His Plan B is to start a Web site for people seeking advice about getting out of debt, and he’s stocking up on self-help books promising that “if you follow your passions, you’re halfway there.”

As the play opens Ben is getting ready to throw some steaks on the grill for their new next-door neighbors, the slightly younger Sharon (Sarah Sokolovic) and Kenny (Darren Pettie). These two are a couple of rungs lower on the socioeconomic scale — she works at a call center and he labors at a warehouse — and Mary couldn’t help noticing that their house, which they are renting from one of Kenny’s relatives, hasn’t got a stick of furniture in it. As a friendly gesture, Mary triumphantly drags out a coffee table as a gift.

Photo

Amy Ryan, left, and Sarah Sokolovic in Lisa D’Amour’s play “Detroit” at Playwrights Horizons.Credit
Ruby Washington/The New York Times

The accouterments of your average suburban home — the patio umbrella, the back porch, the sliding-glass door — become emblems of surprising menace in Ms. D’Amour’s carefully patterned play, echoing the emotional tension that slowly builds between the two couples, who, as they begin spending more time together, trade their troubles the way that couples of earlier generations swapped stories of their kids’ ball-field triumphs.

Although they share the standard values that have long kept the middle class on the straight and narrow path — the belief that hard work and diligence will be rewarded with a steady job and a solid home in a respectable neighborhood — Mary and Ben are beginning to suspect that the terms of this unofficial contract have been permanently altered, and not to their benefit.

One result is a susceptibility to the impulsive pleasure-seeking that Sharon and Kenny, who met in rehab, subtly encourage. “You’ve got to live this moment, Mary,” Sharon says at one point. “That’s all you can do.”

Ms. Ryan, whose return to the New York stage could not be more welcome, gives a terrific performance as the fear-haunted Mary, clinging by her fingernails to emotional equilibrium. Ms. Ryan’s brittle smile seems always to be hiding an inner wince, as if behind the bright domestic chatter her soul is walking across hot charcoal briquettes.

Mary is unsettled by the way Sharon and Kenny so casually tread an economic precipice — Sharon confesses that at 31 she’s still eating ramen for dinner most nights because they can’t afford anything else. “What’s going to happen to you?” Mary asks, her voice hushed with concern, but the fear is as much for her own future with Ben.

Video

Excerpt: 'Detroit'

Mr. Schwimmer, who began his career on the Chicago stage, brings his signature air of quizzical geniality to Ben. Gradually he allows us to see how nagging fears for his future have thoroughly sapped Ben’s confidence, inspiring him to take refuge in pure fantasy about how he and Mary might escape the troubles slowly engulfing them.

Ms. Sokolovic and Mr. Pettie are likewise excellent as the good neighbors with bad credit. Kenny’s manly camaraderie with Ben, hilariously highlighted in a monologue in which he tries to seduce Ben into a boys’ night out at a strip club, is subtly threaded with envy and a hint or two of unspoken hostility. Ms. Sokolovic’s Sharon exudes a warm innocence, but beneath the daffy exterior (for no sensible reason she thinks Ben sounds British) Sharon possesses surprising insight into how disorderly life can be, how susceptible everyone’s fate is to the workings of chance.

In the play’s most arresting monologue Sharon reveals to Mary how she struggles to resist the allure of easy escape through drugs. “Every day really is a new day,” she says, “but, Mary, I open my eyes every morning and all I want is a pipe to smoke. It’s like there’s a fire burning in the center of my head, Mary, and the pipe is the water that will put it out.”

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She has lost the belief that she is the architect of her own destiny, a supposed cornerstone of the increasingly provisional American dream. “I’m supposed to set goals and take night classes that will expand my horizons,” she continues. “And I guess that works, Mary, I guess so. But to be honest I feel like the real opportunities are the ones that fall into your lap. Like winning the lottery or someone’s rich uncle needing a personal assistant. That almost happened to me once, Mary. And everything would have been different.”

The hope — or is it the fear? — that everything can be different for them, too, inspires Mary and Ben to indulge in a night of excess with their new neighbors that has surprising consequences. It’s giving too much away to say more, but “Detroit” concludes with a quiet coda featuring the always excellent John Cullum as a man who lived in the neighborhood many years before, reminiscing fondly about the halcyon days of casual social interaction between suburban dwellers: summer dances at the pavilion, when the grown-ups stayed up past their bedtime and forgot about how much the baby sitter might cost.

But in keeping with its cleareyed assessment of the country’s troubled present, Ms. D’Amour’s play is no less wise about the anesthetizing comforts of nostalgia. Mr. Cullum’s genial figure concludes his celebratory aria with a sad acknowledgment that perhaps even the past isn’t what it used to be. “Such a perfect memory,” he muses sadly, “sometimes I wonder if it was real at all.”

Detroit

CastJohn Cullum as Frank, Darren Pettie as Kenny, Amy Ryan as Mary, David Schwimmer as Ben and Sarah Sokolovic as Sharon

PreviewAugust 24, 2012

OpenedSeptember 18, 2012

Closing Date October 28, 2012

This information was last updated: April 26, 2017

A version of this review appears in print on September 19, 2012, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Desperately Trying to Stay Stuck in the Middle. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe